Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE CLIMAX OF JESUS' MISSION §19.2
festing his authority in fuller and final fashion. The imminence of that coming
constituted a crisis for Jesus' hearers. For God's rule would be characterized by
eschatological reversal, the haughty humbled and the poor uplifted, the little
ones made great, and the last given first place. And the kingdom's coming would
be attended by great suffering, and followed by judgment, but also by rich reward
(symbolized in the festive feast) for the penitent faithful.
To be more specific in deductions regarding the remembered Jesus at this
point has proven impossible. The crisis of which Jesus spoke is not reducible to a
social or political crisis. But the vision fleshed-out in his parables had clear social
and political ramifications and consequences — this can hardly be denied.
Nor is it any clearer whether Jesus envisaged a whole new order of human society
(the end of time, resurrection, new creation) or used such language to express
hope for a reconstituted society on earth. That it was hope in God, and for the future
as God's — that is clear. But the 'what' of that hope remains in metaphorically
allusive language, which still works to stir vision afresh and to evoke renewed
hope but which can never be translated fully or adequately into
descriptive prose without debilitating loss of content and power.
That the hope and evocative intention of Jesus' kingdom message were directed
particularly to Israel is also clear. If Jesus' choice of twelve is any indication,
then the hope and intention were in some sense for a restored Israel, for the
scattered sheep to be gathered again under their true shepherd, or possibly for Israel
to be reconstituted afresh as the assembly of Yahweh with a new focal point
(Temple) for worship. But was it a hope for Israel to be liberated from an oppressive
(Roman?) regime (to echo the language of Luke 24.21), or for the kingdom
to be restored to Israel (to echo the question of Acts 1.6)? Was it a hope for the
scattered of Israel (the two-thirds of Israel dispersed beyond Israel's borders) to
be restored to the land (the end of exile), the meek to inherit (afresh) the land? Or
was the call primarily a repetition of the call of prophets before him for the faithless
of Israel to turn back to their God, to honour his name, and to live in accord
with his priorities, all made possible, perhaps, by a (re)new(ed) covenant? The
frustration at being unable to press finally for any one positive answer or to exclude
finally any other positive answer is intense. But once again we should hesitate
long and hard before insisting on either-or exegesis or that Jesus' kingdom
message can be heard in only one way or as working on only one dimension.
The clearest fleshing out of Jesus' hope, the clearest indications of his aim
at this point, is probably provided by the signals he is recalled as giving in regard
to his own priorities: his mission to bring good news for the poor and to
call sinners. Here the reconstituted Israel reaffirms what had always been Israel's
constitutional priorities. From a kingdom perspective, a society in which
the poor are uncared for is unacceptable to God: the self-indulgent rich and
powerful stand in eternal peril of trusting in their riches, wheras the poor trust-
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